What are you reading?

[dark_crystal]

I read this last Sunday and never wrote the review! Which is due today!



This is the catalog for an exhibition of the Bodleian library's Tolkien collection. The exhibited items include photos, letters, drawings, maps, notes, etc,

I do not know whether i am supposed to review the exhibition itself or the book about the exhibition

Or what the difference would be.

One thing i learned from this book is that the novels were kind of beside the point for Tolkien.

His main deal was inventing the language. After that he cared most about inventing the mythology. The novels seem like kind of an afterthought.

What i need to know now is whether this is emphasized as heavily in existing Tolkien biographies. I have pulled three out of the stacks, but this seems like a lot of research for a 175-word assignment

[Greco]

"The Shallows What the internet
is Doing to Our Brains"
by Nicholas Carr

Clarifying, Challenging


"The Undressed Art Why we
Draw" by Peter Steinhart

Good conversation with a writer who
draws...good one.

Greco

[homoe]

I've just started reading this heist thriller and yes the 1983 TV series was based on this book. The characters are well developed but total opposites of each. I hope Viola plays the role of Dolly.

Sidebar:Widows is soon to be made into a film directed by Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave) from a screenplay by him and Gillian Flynn. The film will features an ensemble cast including Viola Davis. . 20th Century Fox will release the film around November of this year.

[Medusa]

I just finished "The Outsider" (the new Stephen King) and it was entertaining...Classic King but a good background listen while cleaning the house.

Also just wrapped "Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston. VERY good read.

I just downloaded a new audiobook and one for the Kindle since I have 2 going almost all the time.
The audiobook is "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis"

And one for the Kindle: "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg"

[easygoingfemme]

I just finished The Great Alone. Wow... it was an all out binge read up all night finishing at sunrise on the back porch. Intense and so good and I totally have a book hangover from it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5WRS2C...ng=UTF8&btkr=1

Alaska, 1974.
Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights’ lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska—a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature

[clay]

Just found a really great condition nearly 50 year old hardback edition of O'Henry's....titled Tales of O'Henry!

I love the Gift of the Magi esp!

[cinnamongrrl]

I just started.reading The Revenant by Michael Punke.

Its.the book version of the very excellent Leonardo diCaprio movie.. The book is also excellent and I'm half way through it already

[Tuff Stuff]

Anything by David Paulides. Also checking out his stuff on YouTube.
I have been very interested about missing people lately ever since a woman that I knew disappeared without a trace a few months back. She had been walking a route she normally took every other evening,this time with a friends dog.She never made it home this time.There was a huge search for her and lots of media attention.The dog came back home a couple days later. The case went cold after a few weeks and now everyone that knew her calls it a tragic mystery because the missing woman was friendly and did lots of charity work in the community and who would want to hurt such a person.Sad when I think about her because I knew her for ten years.No body, no clues, she just vanished off the face of the earth.It disturbs me greatly what happen to her.

[Fancy]

The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50

By Jonathan Rauch

https://g.co/kgs/v9F91r

Interesting, but still too early to give it a thorough review.

[cinnamongrrl]

I started.reading Hiking Through by Paul Stutzman

It's about a man's travels on the Appalachian Trail and his reasons for making the journey.

He's a little preachy and God-dy but I think the story is worth the side bars.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

I have now started GNOMON, by Nick Harkaway

To call Gnomon a work of genius is not entirely a compliment. Nick Harkaway’s epic, unwieldy, unpredictable new novel is outwardly brainy and pridefully digressive, and the distance it projects from its reader feels excruciatingly deliberate. Harkaway (Tigerman) wears his deep, fabulous vocabulary on his sleeve, and he’s unafraid to ruminate on the seemingly irrelevant in great detail. The sheer intelligence of the book feels almost beside the point; it’s to be taken as something of a given.

If Gnomon is not exactly a departure from Harkaway’s previous work, it’s at least his rawest effort, a window into his writerly impulses and motivations — into what separates him from the pack. It’s why, at first glance, Gnomon nicely stands out as a dystopian novel that manages to approach the genre uniquely and push it forward. The book arrives stateside after a year in which 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale skyrocketed on best-seller lists and found popular adaptations in theater and television, respectively. More broadly, the genre has felt appropriately ubiquitous in a tumultuous and unsettling political era.

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

Ooooh, I just read a good book review about Gnomon by Mark Harkaway, in The Guardian.

It looks like an good book to read and I hope to find it at Powell's.



LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ment-110011379

I finished GNOMON last night. It was loooooooong and a little confusing and got a little slow toward the end but i enjoyed it. I have read at least one of his other novels that i liked better, though

Now i am reading FORGED IN CRISIS (Nancy Koehn) for book club and FADING DUSK (Melissa Giorgio) for fun.

FORGED IN CRISIS:

This “engaging, unusually rewarding book…[which] will foster a new appreciation for effective leadership and prompt many readers to lament the lack of it in the world today” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), by celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, examines five masters of crisis: explorer Ernest Shackleton; Abraham Lincoln; abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.

FADING DUSK

In the gritty city of Dusk, seventeen-year-old Irina makes her living as the street magician Bantheir’s assistant. The job isn’t glamorous, but she loves the crowds, the shows, and most of all, the illusion of magic. But Irina’s world is shattered the night she is arrested and charged as Bantheir’s accomplice to murder—murder by magic.

Real magic, the kind that’s been forbidden since the old wars.

Irina finds the idea of flashy showman Bantheir using actual magic to kill someone laughable, but she’s the only one who sees how ridiculous the claim is. But how can she convince everyone Bantheir is innocent when they’ve already made up their minds?

i am reading that second one because the author is a friend of a friend. I like to support indies and that friend has good taste so i bought it.

[homoe]

A father and his 13 year-old daughter are living in a paradisiacal existence in a vast urban park in Portland Oregon when a small mistake derails their lives forever.

Today the movie Leave No Trace opened to rave reviews and it's based on this book...

[Medusa]

Originally Posted by Medusa

I just finished "The Outsider" (the new Stephen King) and it was entertaining...Classic King but a good background listen while cleaning the house.

Also just wrapped "Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston. VERY good read.

I just downloaded a new audiobook and one for the Kindle since I have 2 going almost all the time.
The audiobook is "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis"

And one for the Kindle: "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg"

OMG! "Hillbilly Elegy" was so good!! Highly recommended! Tough to read in some parts but very familiar and on point.

I am making my way through "Notorious RBG" but just started "The Woman in the Window" by AJ Finn and it's very reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock and film noir. Love it!

[RebelDyke]

hands you my Special Education Law books..both federal and state governments...lol

you want hitchcock??? there ya go